ZD30 – Edited By The CIA

Gawker has the details. All of the CIA’s suggested changes make the CIA look better. Mark Boal complied with all of them. If you ponder the meaning of Maya’s decision not to join in a torture session at the outset, ponder no more. The CIA said it didn’t happen that way. So Boal complied. Money quote:

Wired‘s Spencer Ackerman, for example, interpreted Maya’s complex relationship to on-screen torture as a sign of a complex inner life: “Maya is… a cipher: she is shown coming close to puking when observing the torture. But she also doesn’t object to it.” Of course, the scene reads a bit differently if the choice was dictated by a CIA propaganda officer.

The CIA also took issue with an interrogation scene that featured a dog intimidating a detainee. Boal took it out: “We raised an objection that such tactics would not be used by the Agency,” the memo reads. “Boal confirmed in January that the use of dogs was taken out of the screenplay.”